Piña Coladas
by Twinings
Summary: ...and getting caught in the rain.  [CAT]


_Disclaimer: I haven't owned Batman for the past, like, fifty fics. You really think that's going to change with this one?_

_CATverse timeline: www. freewebs. com/ catverse_

_This story was slated to take place in February, 2016. I'm hereby pulling rank (on...myself) and putting it in early December, 2015 instead. After Techie's "Making Up For Lost Time." Before "CATfight."_

_Enjoy._

* * *

There were a few places that Jonathan Crane had learned to avoid over the years. Dark alleys. The insides of coffins. Dark alleys. Wedding chapels. Dark alleys. Any place voodoo priestesses might tend to congregate. _Dark alleys._

(His minions insisted that he was safe from voodoo, if nothing else. They also insisted that it was better that he not know _why_ he was safe. He wasn't going to ask.)

After tonight, he was going to add one more item to the list of places he should avoid at all costs.

Bridges.

The heist had been going so well. The girls' skills had improved to an amazing degree in their time away from him, and since they had returned, they had only gotten better and better. He wasn't going to tell _them_ so, but they were ready to be first-rate villains in their own right, if they ever got around to leaving him. They might even be a credit to their teacher. Not that he would ever say so.

There was only one thing that still gave them trouble, the same thing that gave everyone trouble in this town—Batman.

The girls had crossed paths with the Big Bad Bat a few times, escaping each time through sheer dumb luck. That wasn't going to be enough this time.

They had _tried_ running, of course. Everyone always tried to escape. But Batman wasn't making it easy for them. And Batman in a determined mood was a Batman to be feared.

They could have split up, but the girls refused to leave their Squishums alone, perhaps recalling the _last_ time he had run from Batman in a raging thunderstorm. (The words "catch your death" were mentioned more than once, as if he couldn't be trusted to take care of himself.)

Or they might have been worried about the beating he was sure to receive if he was caught without his bodyguards. Batman wasn't the worst in that respect, but he had bestowed permanent limps on more than one of his lucky opponents.

Whatever their reasons, they refused to leave him, and so the four of them went tearing across the Gotham Bridge in the pouring rain, loaded down with specialized medical equipment, with Batman hot on their heels.

The Captain was the first to go down. Jonathan didn't see what happened; he just heard her cry of outrage, and when he looked back, she was handcuffed to the guardrail. The woman had once bragged that she could escape any knot, but he didn't think she would have the same luck with Batcuffs. One down.

He slipped and fell, an undignified bellyflop facedown in a puddle. That should have been the end of the chase, but Al and Techie, valorous idiots, put themselves between him and Batman.

"What do you say we call it a draw?" Al said. Trust her to be the one who dared to _tease_ Batman. If not for their unreasoning loyalty and affection, he would have foisted these girls off on the Joker or the Mad Hatter a long time ago. Hell, even the Riddler was better equipped to deal with their insane humor than he was.

Jonathan could almost sympathize with Batman, who growled a moderately threatening order for the girls to stand down.

They laughed in his face. That was just their way of dealing with fear, but _he_ didn't know that. He must have taken it as the insult it seemed to be. Still, he waited for them to make the first move.

A flash of lightning illuminated the Bat for the briefest moment, stark contrasts between lights and darks skewing all perspective. Yet again, Jonathan was struck by the dramatics of the cape and cowl. Brown sack cloth could never achieve quite that same effect, no matter how eerily unsettling it might be.

Al laughed again, a laugh of pure nervousness without a hint of mockery in it. Had they been somewhere safe, he would have taken a perverse delight in studying her fear of storms. As it was, he only sighed, knowing she wasn't going to attack Batman, except maybe for a chance to hide under his cape.

So it was all up to Techie.

He didn't have high hopes for this fight.

After a few rounds of banter, during which Crane had time to regain his footing and back off to a secure observation point, Techie gave in and started the fight by chucking a scalpel at Batman's head.

Batman seemed surprised, and not without good cause. Throwing a scalpel? What had possessed her to do _that_? It didn't even do any damage, other than slightly nicking the armored cowl.

He was going to have to have a long talk with her later. If there was a later. The Dark Knight's body language swiftly went from surprised to annoyed when she threw a second scalpel, followed by a third.

Well, this was what happened when he let them pick up whatever struck their fancy. They came away with twice as much "ooh, shiny" as necessary equipment.

When an increasingly unamused Batman made his first move to attack, Al snapped out of her thunder-induced trauma and flung a shoe at him. What she was doing with a shoe, he had no idea, but it did its job of catching Batman off guard. It probably wasn't too often that someone hit him with a _shoe_.

"Divide and conquer," the Captain yelled, her voice barely audible over the storm. The other two grinned, recognizing her intent. It was a strategy they often used on each other in play, two of them ganging up on the third and attacking from opposite sides. It might not be the way to win the fight, but it was sure to annoy him, and sometimes, for these girls, that was all that mattered.

Al tried circling around while Techie had his attention. He didn't allow that—he was _Batman_, after all—but it would have been a good plan. As it was, since neither of them could get around behind him, they settled for splitting as far apart as possible, and…throwing things.

Well, it was better than moving in close. Neither one of them would have lasted thirty seconds in a hand-to-hand fight. But they could only dance around like that for so long before they either ran out of ammo or wore themselves out.

Or before Batman started throwing things back.

Al pegged him with another shoe (where had she _gotten_ those?) and he turned around and hit her with a batarang.

His strength and accuracy were unsurpassed. She never had a chance. The batarang hit her in the head, and she dropped like a stone, practically at Jonathan's feet.

He took that as his cue to leave.

But he didn't get more than a couple of steps away before a sharp cry of pain stopped him short.

Why that should stop him, he couldn't have said. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected the hand-to-hand combat to go badly. It wasn't as if he _cared_ about Techie and her ridiculously weak wrists. It wasn't as if he had any reason to feel…_odd_ when he saw her fall to her knees, holding her left arm to her chest.

Why would he want to spare her any pain? He wasn't going to rush to her rescue. That just wasn't the way he did things.

"Squishy?" Al mumbled. He looked down at her. She was waking up, but still too dazed to be worth much.

"Get up," he said gruffly. She tried—and failed. Reluctantly, he held out a hand to help her up, telling himself that the more alert she was, the longer she would keep Batman away from _him_.

The Captain was yelling urgently. He couldn't tell what she was so worked up about until he looked back and saw the headlights approaching.

Didn't it just figure? No one on the road for the last hour, and _now_ they had an out of control bus hydroplaning towards them at a ridiculous speed.

Whoever was in charge of these things had a really sick sense of humor.

With a flap of the cape, Batman played the dashing hero and tackled Techie, cushioning her fall and rolling with her out of the way. Crane, far less dramatic, simply took a step back, dragging Al along with him.

The good news was, the bus missed them. It crashed into the guardrail barely a foot to his right.

But by that time, he was no longer paying attention to the bus.

Al's balance was shaky under the best conditions. Her balance with a head injury…frighteningly bad.

She fell against him. He fell against the rail. And their combined weight took them over the edge.

He felt his fingers catch on the slick metal. Had it been just him, he might have made it. But Al was still hanging on to his right hand, and with a jerk that nearly tore his arm out of its socket, he lost his grip.

The next thing he knew, Al was clinging to him and screaming in his ear. He felt his stomach give way to something else, and with the certainty of a man who sees his own impending death and has nothing to lose, he held on to her as desperately as she was holding on to him.

He couldn't die like this. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. Sure, there were dumber ways to die, a few of which he had almost tried out for himself. Key word _almost_.

God, he didn't want to die. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to—

Damn! How could the water be so cold? For a moment, the shock was so great, he didn't even register pain.

_Then_ it hit him, like running facefirst into a brick wall. Reflexively, he tried to gasp, and got a mouthful of filthy water.

_No, no, no—_

Desperately, he clawed his way to the surface and managed a shallow gasp before his head slipped back below the water. He had never been the strongest swimmer. If he had broken anything in the fall, he would have been done for. Even in the relatively good shape he was in, he wasn't sure he was going to make it. He was just lucky it hadn't been completely frozen over.

Yes. Lucky.

His head broke the surface long enough for a real breath. Where was Al? He'd lost his glasses; he couldn't see a thing. Surely she could swim, though, and she wouldn't have left him behind. He tried calling out to her, and quickly discovered that opening his mouth was a bad idea.

His lungs were burning, and his legs felt like they were made of lead. If she wasn't going to show up, he was just going to have to save himself.

But…he couldn't avoid the thought—_he_ was worried about _her_.

She was never going to let him live this down, he thought as he ducked under the water to search for her.

But all thoughts of embarrassment left his mind when, after an intolerable length of time searching, he found her.

She was unconscious. Unbelievable. She had actually managed to knock herself unconscious when she hit the water--or the thin film of ice on the surface. Somehow, he would have expected better of her.

He freed her from the tree branch she was snagged on, and kicked his way to the surface, pulling her along behind him. Al wasn't the lightest of women, and dragging her dead weight through the water wasn't the easiest thing he had ever done. He found himself cursing her roundly in his head long before he took his first gulp of air.

How far was the bank? A nightmarish distance, of course. Why should he have expected anything different?

She was going to owe him so much when she woke up. With this kind of leverage, he could get her to leave him in peace for a week solid.

In a moment of uncharacteristic romanticism, it crossed his mind that only the thought of a whole week of freedom would give him the strength to press on.

It also occurred to him that he would be free forever if he just let her drown. But, knowing her, she would manage to find some way around that—be rescued by mermaids, or some other such nonsense.

No, it was better to keep her alive and claim his reward. It would be harder for her to sneak up on him that way.

But what on earth had she been eating? Was she wearing a lead suit? It shouldn't be humanly possible for her to weigh this much.

Unless he was far more tired than he should have been. Maybe he would be putting forth the same amount of effort just to keep his own head above the surface…but it was easier to blame Al.

Although he did rather wish she could give him one of her trademark snappy retorts…if only for the sake of conversation.

The shore came within reach, and not a moment too soon. He would prefer to avoid waxing maudlin with a woman dying in his arms.

Not that Al was _dying_, per se, but…

Oh, forget it. He scrambled up the bank, hauling Al up behind him.

It is never a particularly pleasurable experience for a man to come up feeling like a drowned rat. Even without the cold and the freezing rain and the extra burden of a damsel in distress, he wouldn't have been in the best of moods. As it was, all he wanted to do was lie down in the dirt and never get up.

He tried it for a few seconds, hoping to stop shivering and catch his breath. He had never thought he would be so comfortable with a pillow made of mud.

_Get up. You don't have time for this. There's still Batman._

Shakily, he heaved his way to his knees and glared down at Al. She wasn't moving.

Strike that—she wasn't _breathing_.

More than once, he had seen her succumb to a severe asthma attack after a particularly energetic fight or an upsetting experience. At those times, he had always been perfectly happy to laugh at her misfortune. There had never been any startling jolts of utter panic when he saw her in trouble.

Until now.

A part of his mind decided that her death just wouldn't be any fun if he couldn't enjoy the look of fear in her eyes.

The rest of him was already occupied with shaking her and calling her name. He even tried her original name, a set of syllables he had never applied to her before.

"Nichole?" She didn't respond. He wondered vaguely why it was suddenly so hard to breathe. "Don't…" _Don't…_ "Don't make me do this."

Trust her to blatantly disregard a polite request, even when it was in her own best interest to comply.

Stupid, crazy little bitch. He should just let her die. Why wasn't he letting her die?

He felt for a pulse, noticing only distantly that his hands were shaking. (From the _cold_.) It was there, but very weak. He was—she was going to—he was _losing_ her.

Well, his reputation was already in ruins thanks to those three. This couldn't make things any worse, could it?

He tilted her head back to clear her airway, pinched her nose shut, and pressed his lips to hers.

She tasted like chocolate and river water, neither of them much of a surprise. What was surprising, somehow, was the utter lack of animation in her face. There was no tension, no change. Her nose didn't crinkle under his fingers. She didn't smile or pucker up to meet him, as he had half feared she would do. She didn't reach up to catch the back of his head and hold him to her. She didn't do _anything_. She felt cold, slack, and dead, and he was struck by the sensation that he was far too late to save her, that he was futilely pouring air into a corpse's lungs.

_No…_

"I hate you," he said conversationally as he sat up and positioned his hands over her chest. "I really, really hate you." Three sharp thrusts. Some water trickled out of her mouth. Nothing else happened. "I hope you get brain damage, Al. I hope—I hope—" He dashed rainwater out of his eyes, brushed his hair back from his face, and bent to breathe into her mouth once more.

_Wake up, Al. Just wake up. You've got what you wanted. You _win._ Now, wake up._

There was no change. Why did his chest feel so tight?

"Al, you _stupid_ little woman! Get up! Don't _do_ this!"

Why the hell was she being so stubborn? Why wouldn't she just _breathe_?

He followed the pattern. Two breaths, five thrusts. He could almost hear her singing in the back of his mind, reminding him to follow the beat of "Another One Bites the Dust."

No response. _Why_? How could she let herself go out so easily? What had happened to the little hellion he knew and l—he _knew_? Where was the woman who laughed at death, who fought off threats with the business end of a shovel, who…who swore she would never leave him, no matter what he said or did?

How could she just up and _die_?

"Al, _please_," he whispered. "I can't—I need—please don't go. I don't want you to die." It actually hurt to admit. And if she'd heard, he would never get the end of it. But by that time, he had all but given up hope.

Then she coughed.

She _coughed_.

He pulled away, startled, feeling rather as if he had just seen a lid go flying off a coffin as the corpse inside jumped up and said, "Boo!"

Belatedly, it occurred to him that it might be a good idea to help her sit up. He ended up supporting her while she emptied her stomach of its contents. Well, why not? She had held him often enough while he did the same, and focusing on her bodily fluids might distract him from the unshakeable feeling of relief that was making him want to snap her neck just to make it go away.

Her head lolled forward, and she fell against him, coughing weakly. Any traces of consciousness were gone.

At least she was breathing, though not very well.

"Al, wake up." He shook her. "We have to go." His voice sounded strange. He couldn't be getting sick again. He did not want a repeat of the pneumonia episode, not with at least two of his nursemaids on their way to Arkham, and the third in worse shape than he was.

He shook her again. She flopped bonelessly and settled back against his chest.

"Scarecrow."

Batman?

Startled, Crane let go of Al. She sprawled in the mud as he scrambled to his feet to face the vigilante.

_How long has _he_ been there?_

Mud. Very poor traction. He should have thought of that.

His feet went out from under him, and he ended up flat on his back.

Was there any way he could have the entire day stricken from the record?

He tried to get up again to make a more dignified stand, but quickly gave up with a hiss of pain when he realized he had—in the best case scenario—pulled a muscle. He wouldn't be fighting any time soon, not if he wanted to stay in one piece. He settled for sitting up and giving the Dark Knight a baleful glare.

"Have you been _crying_?" Batman asked incredulously?

"No!" He cursed the current that had swept his mask away. Batman just looked at him. "Shut. Up."

He was going to have to sit through hug therapy all over again, he just knew it.

--

Well, at least they didn't _call_ it hug therapy this time around. Crane spent a week in Arkham dealing with the tedium of confinement to the infirmary (he _did_ catch pneumonia again, though only a _very_ mild case this time) broken only by therapy sessions with his new psychiatrist, a fruity little "Joy of Painting" type who called him Jon and refused to inadvertently divulge any information at all.

He'd be damned if he would actually _ask_ about the girls. But he did find himself wondering what had become of them. He had just assumed that they would end up in Arkham. Any idiot (who was also a brilliant psychologist) could see that they belonged there.

So where were they?

And what was happening to them?

And why did he care?

He was starting to remind himself of Harley Quinn mooning over the Joker. And he couldn't think of anything more disturbing than that.

When they finally resurfaced, though, it all came as a bit of a shock.

He was alone in his cell, reading a poorly written horror novel because it was the only book he could get his hands on, when the guard came to inform him that he had a visitor. That in itself was a novelty. On the exceedingly rare occasion that someone actually came to see him, it was invariably either Batman or the representative of a villain coming to pump him for information. This time, he didn't _have_ any information that would interest the usual suspects.

The knowing way the guard smirked at him did not inspire confidence. Neither did the fact that the man led him not to the usual room with the traditional glass wall and telephones, but to a barren little cell that he remembered all too well from Lyle Bolton's days.

He was left alone to cool his heels in that wretched little room. Wonderful. Because he had nothing better to do with his afternoon than to relive memories best left buried. (Sadly, that was not sarcasm.) The room was stark white—the bloodstains had been painted over, but they were still visible to someone who knew where to look.

Crane knew.

There were no windows, and only the one door, which was almost too heavy for one man to move. The walls were thick enough to render the room virtually soundproof. It was unpleasantly like being buried alive.

_As opposed to what, exactly?_

He had never had a _pleasant_ experience being buried alive. In fact, after the last time, that particular game was something he would go out of his way to avoid in the future.

Not that he had exactly sought it out _before_…

What was taking so long?

Not that he was nervous in any way. He wasn't nervous, no. Nope. Not at all.

No.

And he was just drumming on his knees because, secretly, he had always wanted to be Ringo Starr.

Right, who was he kidding? Out of all the hundreds of rooms in this madhouse, he had to wait in _this_ one.

What was _taking_ so long? Whatever was going to happen couldn't possibly by any worse than the waiting.

Could it?

Oh, it _could_.

Granted, it could have been worse than it was—and he would have considered it so, a year or more in the past—but he still felt briefly overcome by unreasoning dread when the guard finally returned and led _Techie_ into the room.

What was she doing there? Was this some poorly planned rescue attempt? She couldn't be a prisoner, not the way she was dressed. Actually, aside from the cast on her left hand and a few other marks of rough handling, she was more presentable than usual.

She was also in a spitting fury.

Directed at him? Why? Maybe he shouldn't have stood up to meet her. Maybe he should have made a break for the door. Maybe—

"Jonathan, how _could_ you?" She slapped him hard enough to make his eyes water. All he could do was gape at her. "With my best friend? My _best friend_, Jonathan! Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

"What?"

(He thought that was rather clever, under the circumstances.)

"What? _What?!_ You and _Al_, you idiot! Everyone's talking about it! I had to hear about it from the _Riddler_!"

"W-what?" he repeated. She shoved him back against the wall.

"Don't play innocent, you cheating _bastard_!" She broke down, sobbing, and pounded on his chest with not a fraction of the force of which he knew she was capable. A quick search of her face told him that, while she was making all the right noises, there were no actual tears in her eyes.

So, she was putting on a show for the guards, was she? In that case, she was hitting him far harder than necessary, and should be stopped immediately.

He caught her hand in mid-pound and pulled her close to him.

"Me and Al? Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous in your life?" Then, in a loverly kind of way, he whispered in her ear, "What's this all about?"

"Oh, Jonathan." She let herself melt into his arms, murmuring, "Remember Atlantic City?"

"Of course." How could he forget? Like so many other places, the wedding chapel had seemed a clever place to hide from Batman at the time.

Like so many other places, it was going to come back to bite him…wasn't it?

"Eddums says it's legally binding."

He choked.

"You mean, we—" She nodded once, giving him a look of warning. "And this—" Her expression flashed snarky for the barest moment.

"Conjugal visit."

Oh. Well, that did explain why the guards weren't watching them too closely, he thought with remarkable aplomb. That didn't mean they weren't monitoring a hidden camera somewhere (and probably hoping to sell the tapes over the internet) but they weren't making their presence an obvious threat.

Fascinating.

He tried hard to stay composed as he led his…wife over to the single piece of furniture in the room, a stainless steel bench welded to the wall. They sat…together.

_Mrs. Crane._ He tested the phrase and discarded it. Legal or not, the marriage meant no more than he allowed it to mean. Legality rarely affected his actions, anyway. Nothing had to change.

He just hoped _she_ knew that.

"How…have you been?" he asked awkwardly. Was that right? How was a husband supposed to talk to his wife, anyway? He wasn't all that sure he would be able to code the things he really wanted to say into lover-talk.

"How do you _think_ I've been, Jonathan? I've been in the hospital!" She was back in the role of Deeply Hurt Wife™. "And did I get any get-well flowers? _Nooo_."

"I was a little busy," he said lamely. Wow. It was a good thing this wasn't for real. He would have been a total failure as a husband. He had some vague ideas about compromise and letting the woman be right, mostly picked up from sitcoms he had watched when there was nothing to read, but…hell, he didn't know how it really _worked_.

"Oh, _busy_, he says!" Her voice was strident in a wholly unfamiliar way. "You know, the _Captain_ managed to send a couple of tulips, and _she_ was in prison. Tell me this, Jonathan, did you send _Al_ any flowers?"

"Why would I send Al flowers? And how _could_ I?"

"I don't know, Jonathan, how could you?" She scrubbed imaginary tears from her eyes. "Somebody sent her _something_, or else she wouldn't have been able to walk right out of her hospital room."

"Oh…darling." The word rolled off his tongue like a fat brick. "You don't really think I'd rescue her and not you, do you?" With a single finger under her chin, he tilted her head back to look into her eyes. Actually, he found himself focusing on the gash crossing over her left eyebrow. It looked like it was going to scar. He hoped Batman had gotten the worse end of the deal. "Don't you know how much you mean to me?"

Her lips curved up in an ironic little smile, which she covered with a noisy sob.

"Damn you, Jonathan, why can't I just stay mad at you?" She rested her head on his shoulder. He held her close, in the perfect position to whisper sweet nothings in each other's ears. "Captain and I are out, free and legal," she murmured. "Charmed the pants off the judge, we did."

"And Al?"

"Three days malingering in the hospital, then we borrowed something from Ivy and busted her out. Told me to tell you, 'Ferris Beuller, you're my hero.'"

That didn't mean anything to him, but it did sound like Al. He assumed it meant she had made a full recovery.

"Now what?"

"Don't worry, we have a plan." That kind of talk did _not_ discourage him from worrying. "Too risky to sneak anything in, though. Too bad, 'cause we had this great plan involving a wedding ring…but they wouldn't have let you keep it, anyway. So now I just have a message."

"What's that?" he murmured, nuzzling her ear.

"Don't eat the peas."

Don't eat the peas? What kind of message was _that_?

"Is that it?" She nodded, snuggling up to him with a contented sigh. Great. So what were they supposed to do with the rest of this conjugal visit?

"We've got fifteen minutes left," Techie said, as if reading his mind. "Want to make out?"

Oh, _hell_. He was never going to Atlantic City again. _Ever._


End file.
